[7DS] If By "Reinvent" One Means "Imitate", I Agree

There is a fascinating post on Find It Fill It blog (looks to me like this is a commercial real estate brokerage of some sort) about how Loopnet’s “crowdsourcing” model will reinvent commercial real estate as we know it:

This is like aiming a cannon to your competition that’s holding a pistol. If you leverage your user base to work for you and you provide them a better data service in the process, that’s the promised land of a business-client relationship. In technology terms, LoopNet is using a business model from the Web 2.0 period called, “Crowdsourcing”. Crowdsourcing is when a web software company provides the platform and the data entry/update is in part generated by the contribution of its users. So, let’s say an office building in LoopNet’s property database says that it was sold in 1999, but you (the user) know that it was just sold on November 1, 2010 for $2 million, LoopNet allows you to update that data yourself. Not only does this help you, but also you fellow professionals and in the end, LoopNet. This is very POWERFUL stuff. Having commercial real estate professionals who are “in the trenches” update this property data is the best quality in data that a commercial real estate data operation like LoopNet can ever wish for. Its competitors will be very envious and if they don’t move fast, they can lose ground quickly. (Emphasis mine.)

Interesting. Well, I happen to agree with the FIFI blogger 100%, provided that by “reinvent” he really meant “imitate” the 100+ year old business model from the Telegraph 1.0 period called the “Multiple Listing Service”.

Managing Partner of 7DS Associates, and the grand poobah of this here blog. Once called "a revolutionary in a really nice suit", people often wonder what I do for a living because I have the temerity to not talk about my clients and my work for clients. Suffice to say that I do strategy work for some of the largest organizations and companies in real estate, as well as some of the smallest startups and agent teams, but usually only on projects that interest me with big implications for reforming this wonderful, crazy, lovable yet frustrating real estate industry of ours.